Congratulations to Dr. Paula Brown, Director, British Columbia Institute of Technology Natural Health and Food Products Research Group (NRG) and Canada Research Chair, for receiving the 2022 Harvey W. Wiley Award from AOAC INTERNATIONAL (AOAC).
The Harvey W. Wiley Award is AOAC’s highest honor for lifetime scientific achievement and recognizes Dr. Brown for her outstanding contributions to dietary supplement product integrity.
“Dr. Brown is an outstanding scientist and valued colleague. She recognized early in her career that analytically derived data that were not reliable, accurate, and precise led to irreproducible and contradictory results,” said Dr. Joseph M. Betz, Acting Director, Office of Dietary Supplements National Institutes of Health “Her long association with AOAC and her volunteer activities in the organization reflect her dedication to the creation and validation of the tools required for the conduct of the basic scientific research that she does so well. It is a real pleasure to see Paula recognized by her peers for the excellence of her research and her contributions to AOAC.”
Dr. Brown is an internationally recognized natural products chemist who has long excelled in the development and validation of analytical methods, quality standards, regulatory compliance, plant metabolomics, and chemotaxonomy. As Director of BCIT NRG, Dr. Brown’s research team focuses on the basic and applied science underlying natural health product (NHP) and food quality and manufacturing processes, along with the roles they play in human health, wellbeing, nutrition, longevity, and society. The NRG team goal is to ensure Canadians can achieve health and economic benefits from Natural Health and Food Products.
“The proper selection and implementation of analytical methods are essential for the assurance of product quality and safety,” said Dr. Brown. “I am truly honoured to receive the AOAC Wiley Award and am grateful to my team at BCIT and colleagues across the food and dietary supplement community for their many years of collaboration and support. “
Given the phytochemical complexity of natural products and dietary supplements sourced from botanicals, Dr. Brown has worked on developing analytical approaches to tackle issues related to quality, authenticity, and safety using chemometric models. Her research team at BCIT has contributed to nine Official Methods of Analysis related to dietary supplement methods.
“Paula has amassed a remarkable record of accomplishment in two decades, and her rate of productive output has only increased in the past five years,” said John H. Cardellina II, Brown’s colleague in the field. “She is resourceful and adaptable to challenges and changing circumstances. In every respect, she represents the very best characteristics of the Wiley awardees.”
Dr. Brown began her career more than 20 years ago at BCIT, where she established her research program and led and contributed to projects on health policy, regulatory affairs, product formulation, botanical authentication, analytical method development and validation, applied chemometrics, bioanalysis, and therapeutic monitoring. She received her Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Chemistry from Dalhousie University, Master of Science in Natural Product Synthesis from Simon Fraser University, and Ph.D. in Natural Product Chemistry from the University of British Columbia.
She recently received the 2021 Norman R. Farnsworth Excellence in Botanical Research Award from the American Botanical Council. Dr. Brown has also been the recipient of the 2019 Waters Award for Innovations in Natural Product Research presented by the American Society of Pharmacognosy, the 2016 Neil Towers Award presented by the NHP Research Society of Canada, the American Herbal Products Association’s 2016 Herbal Insight Award, the 2011 Richard E. Schultes Research Award from Economic Botany and the 2013 and 2020 Thieme Award Planta Medica Most Innovative Original Paper.
As an active volunteer, Dr. Brown currently serves as Co-chair of Health Canada’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Health Products Containing Cannabis, a member of NSF’s Joint Committee for Dietary Supplements, which she chaired from 2007-2018, serves as an advisor to the American Botanical Council, the United States Pharmacopoeia and the American Herbal Pharmacopeia. She previously served as President of the NHP Research Society of Canada, was an inaugural member of the US National Institutes for Health’s Product Integrity Working Group, a policy advisor on the NHP Program Advisory Committee for Health Canada, and Chair of Health Canada’s Working group on Standards of Evidence for the Quality of Natural Health Products.
Dr. Brown has authored more than 85 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and monographs on aspects analytical method development, quality assurance, and the chemical constituents of commercially important botanicals.